[BALUG-Talk] REMINDER: BALUG: meeting: TUESDAY 2020-02-18 Rich Morin...

[Rick Moen]

Quoting aaronco36 (aaronco36@SDF.ORG):

> FYI, http://henryshunan.com/ now links to a
> blog by a "Henry Shunan" rather than to the
> intended Henry's Hunan Restaurant in SF :-|
> It's ultimately up to the BALUG organizer(s)
> of course, but could/should perhaps the above
> Henry's Hunan link be changed to something like
> https://www.yelp.com/biz/henrys-hunan-restaurant-san-francisco
> (??)

I have a couple'a thoughts about the above, on reflection:

1.  In my experience, it is indeed often much more useful
    to link to the relevant Yelp page about a restaurant
    than to anywhere else, for lots of reasons including
    restaurants (like other non-tech firms) being often
    really dreadful about keeping their online information
    accurate.

    I learned a lesson about this down here in Menlo Park,
    two years ago:  There's a small market called Willows 
    Market, famous for their beer inventory.  (One of their
    sandwich board signs says 'We have 992 great beers and
    six terribles ones.')  Here's their Web site:
    http://willowsmarket.com/

    Notice it says they're open until midnight.  A couple 
    of years ago, I really wanted some decent beer, but had
    evening work to do.  I reassured myself that there 
    would be plenty of time to get to Willows before midnight,
    left home at 11:10, and was annoyed to find the store 
    tightly shut up for the night with signs that it had 
    happened significantly more than an hour ago.  All the
    almost-as-good places for microbrew purchases, such as 
    Whole Paycheck Market (er, Whole Foods Market) and Trader
    Joe's were now closed.  With some irritation, I settled 
    on Safeway and bought a six-pack of Anchor Porter.

    Here's the Yelp page:
    https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-willows-market-menlo-park
    Notice it says they close at 10pm.  Gee, guess who's right?

    I called the store the next day during business hours, and 
    said 'Gosh, I really wanted to buy beer from you guys last
    night, but your Web site's antimarketing drove me to 
    Safeway, instead.  Maybe you should consider fixing your 
    goddamned Web site, unless you really prefer losing business.'

    The guy said 'Er, sorry about that, but we can't fix it.  
    We hired a firm to create the site years ago, but don't 
    have access to edit it.  I was stunned, and all I could 
    say was 'If I were the owner, I would mirror the contents
    to my local hard drive, create a new site elswhere, re-host
    the contents _with corrections_, and repoint the firm's DNS
    to there.  And, if the problem is that you don't control your
    domain or DNS, son, you need to sue.'  He said he'd pass on
    my advice to the owner, which of course I don't believe.

    And, two years later, the store's site is still wrong. and
    Yelp is still far better.


2.  It maybe just me, the Hong Kong kid, but, seriously, who needs 
    a restaurant Web site link for a technical meeting and dinner 
    at the restaurant?  For what purpose?  You need the business name 
    and the street address.  In this case, he name tells you it's 
    Hunan style.  Is there anyone left in the Bay Area who has 
    absolutely no idea what Hunan-style Chineses food is like?


FWIW, BALE never included a link to the now-vanished restaurant Web site
(because that struck me as pointless).  Therefore, BALE doesn't need
correcting, now.  There's a lesson in there, somewhere.


> Also, a commentator on another local LUG mailing-list mentioned that
> Henry's Hunan Restaurant's current big presence is rather on
> https://www.facebook.com/HenrysHunanNatoma/

_Way_ less informative than the relevant Yelp page, IMO.

Also, Facebook?  Eww.